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Scorpio Season

Page 24

by Maisie Bell

Henry, chin smeared with tomato sauce, squints at her. “What are you not telling us?”

And Luca tried, she really did—for almost three weeks, she has kept her mouth shut and not told a single person about what happened. She feels like a bottle of sparkling water that someone has shaken. Sitting in her room with her brothers, she physically can’t contain herself anymore. “Isleptwithher.”

Henry chokes on a bite. Mason helpfully thumps his back while he looks at Luca, owl-eyed behind his glasses. “What?”

“I slept with Florence.” Luca buries her face in her hands. “I didn’t mean to. I mean—I did, but that was before I knew.”

“I’m not following,” Mason says.

Henry makes another strangled choking sound in agreement.

“It was just a stupid coincidence. We slept together, and the next day I walked into band practice and she was there—”

“Oh my God.”

“—and we agreed not to tell the others, but now we’re going on tour and she’s just going to be there. Every second of every day. And she makes me feel—I feel like I’m going to combust whenever I’m around her.”

Henry gives one last cough as he blinks at her. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” She runs her fingers through her hair with a ragged laugh. “Shit.”

Mason carefully sets down his pizza box. “Okay. So . . . that isn’t ideal.”

“No, Mason, it is not,” Luca agrees, a touch hysterical.

“Do you want to sleep with her again?”

“Oh God,” Luca says. Her face is on fire. “Please don’t ask me questions like that.”

“You started it!” Henry cries out.

“Come on.” Mason nudges his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his pinkie finger. He’s using a tone that Luca is almost sure is the same one he wields in the classroom. “We’re all adults here.”

In the loosest sense of the word, yeah. Luca exchanges a miserable glance with Henry.

“Well?” Mason prods.

“It wouldn’t matter if I wanted to,” Luca begins.

“Which you do,” Mason observes.

Henry makes a retching sound and pulls out his phone.

“We’re in a band together. We’re going to be spending the next month in each other’s pockets. More than a month, if this goes well.” Luca fiddles with her leather bracelet, twisting it around her wrist again and again. “There’s too much riding on it now. I don’t want to mess it all up.”

“Do you think you can keep pretending it didn’t happen?” Mason asks.

Luca wishes her brother weren’t so good at verbalizing every single thought she tries her hardest to repress. “I think I have no choice.”

“Oh, shit,” Henry says next to her, eyes on his phone. “This is her?”

Luca leans over to see what he’s looking at. It’s one of Scorpio Season’s live performances. Florence is prowling across the stage of a tiny pub, her hair falling in wild curls, hands cradling a microphone.

“She’s . . .” Mason says. “Intense.”

The word describes her well. Luca thinks back to Florence between her thighs, eyes wide and hungry as she drank in every one of Luca’s reactions, and has to get to her feet to walk off the buzz underneath her skin.

Mason watches her pace the room with a concerned furrow between his brows.